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Opinions of Tuesday, 17 June 2008

Columnist: Kusi, Duncan

Ghana is progressing, but ...

One can easily draw his or her conclusion after comparing and contrasting performances of NPP and P/ NDC.

What we can learn from the two parties, as reasonable beings when we compare the past and the present is that we are progressing, but we still have some challenges ahead.

Some of these challenges are, lack of industries, poor educational system, poor management of country's resources, poor relationships between the government and the publics. Please let us take these issues one after the other.

INDUSTRIES It is obvious that we do not have enough industries in this country, and people were expecting NPP gov't to set up industries throughout the whole country in order to reduce unemployement and also feed ourselves after taken over from P/NDC in 2001, but not yet.

EDUCATION One can bear with me that our educational system is very poor as compare to modern educational standards in advanced countries like Britain and America where many of our educated elites graduated from. Our country is still using old educational system like cram, pour and forget.

Our universities websites are very poor. It is impossible to dig below the surface to know the details of their courses. Their websites are not up to universities standard.

Even British private colleges' websites are well built than our first class universities in the country. No wonder, all our Professors are boarding political train to the parliament how can they get enough time for research.

University students have less access to computers, and the worst above all is that the student continue to submit their assignments and thesis through traditional hard papers, while even private college students in Britain submit their assignments through online classrooms created by the college in order to detect pliagiarisms.

MANAGEMENT

Managing resources in an organisation as we know is the work of those who study business management and administration. We can take Ghana as an organisation, because it is the government who manages resources of the country through the aids of other organs and departments.

The resources of this country comprise finance, natural resources like our gold,timber, water bodies, lands, human resources and raw materials like our cocoa,coffee and shea butter. All these resources are not well managed.

We can only manage them well whereby we are able to set-up industries to process some of our raw materials and make use of our human resources, I mean our graduates and professionals to achieve maximum satisfaction.

Ghana imports almost everything from outside, why?

We cannot depend on foreign goods to sustain our economy, it is dangerous to do so, because any little shake in global economy would have very serious effect on our economy too. Let us take the current oil and food crisis as examples.

The government has to rebirth GIHOC and GNTC because we cannot practice capitalism where the people do not have capitals to start their own business.

Research has shown that the government can establish three hundred (300) different food processing factories with amount of US$100 millions to employ more than hundred thousand people.

RELATIONSHIPS

Another area which is not very encouraging is the relationship between the government and the publics or different functions and communities in the country.

The government is very slow in reacting to rumours and speculations. This is very dangerous to the society.

CONCLUSION

The fact that I am pointing out the shortfalls of NPP government does not mean they have not done well. They have performed well and better than P/NDC government when I weigh their performances.

I believe, the shortfalls would draw the government's attention to take a helicopter view on those issues and improve performance.

If the government does not know how to acquire the machines, my company can assist to acquire and even add the turn keys or the technology.

We can produce sugar, soft drinks with our local fruits, process and preserve fish and meat in sealed cans. These will create jobs and be able to feed ourselves at lower costs.

There is nothing better and greater than being self reliance.



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